The Mean Spiritedness of the Right

One thing the recent debate in Congress regarding healthcare reform proved was that political bipartisanship is merely a pipe dream. The final bill that limped into conference is a perfect example of a political strategy gone sour.

President Obama wanted very much to promote bipartisanship during his presidency. In a spirit of collaboration he allowed Congress to do the grunt work of first designing healthcare reform and then passing it. As always, hindsight is 20-20. What should have happened instead would have been for the Obama Whitehouse to craft a bill, and then send it to Congress for them to pass thereby exercising strong leadership. While I support the President’s desire to govern in a spirit of bipartisanship, the reality is that there is nothing necessarily virtuous about doing so. In 2000, the Republicans won and they governed. In 2008, the Democrats won, we should now govern. As attractive as the concept of bipartisanship is, it is a mistake to view it as a critical requirement of two party governance.

While the political process within governance is important, it should never be more important than the will of the people. Millions of Americans elected Barrack Obama in 2008, along with for the most part, a new Congress. They did this because they believed that by doing so, authentic change would take place in our country. What the healthcare debate has proven however is that Republicans, along with so-called Blue-Dog Democrats, are steadfastly opposed to President Obama’s administration—despite the fact that millions of Americans put him into office.

What I think President Obama failed to consider, and to some extent what I think the country as a whole failed to understand, is the utter disdain the far right, as exemplified by the strictly conservative Republican caucus, has for the President. Their strategy throughout the debate was designed to claim that healthcare reform, especially one that included a public option, would diminish competition in the marketplace. That was not enough however as Republican legislators also attempted to convince the American electorate that President Obama wanted to establish “death panels” so that our elderly could be disposed of easily. Republicans publicly vowed that President Obama’s commitment to real healthcare reform would ultimately become his “Waterloo” and boldly interrupted the President calling him a “liar” during his first State of the Union Address. This had the chilling effect of not just performing for the voters back home, but sadly, for the whole world to witness.

The mission of the extreme right in the Republican Party, which dominates their caucus, is to sabotage any semblance of real healthcare reform. Using people like Rush Limbaugh, Sara Pailin and Dick Cheney to whip up the frenzy among the masses, the party of Abraham Lincoln has morphed into the party of Glenn Beck. Once debate began to turn into collaboration, right wing Republican extremists turned visceral and released their lies and innuendos, poisoning the wellspring of cooperation. President Obama faces more than thirty death threats a day with a 400% increase in threats over the past eight years. While the Republican congressional caucus may not be making the actual threats, they have certainly helped to create the conditions and the environment in which they can flourish, and God forbid, turn deadly.

With the wreckage left behind by the Bush presidency, an economic crisis not seen since the Great Depression persists in not dissipating. It is my fervent prayer and hope that this crisis and the many others including wars in Afghanistan and Iraq will not prevent us from moving towards justice and peace without an egregious partisan struggle.